Episode 14: Mike Herchel ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/JAHLIOsIjxg/maxresdefault.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Episode 14: Mike Herchel - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[business]] [[development]] [[drupal]] [[wordpress]] - Summary: Episode 14: Mike Herchel - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAHLIOsIjxg [music] Welcome to Community and Code, uh, the podcast where we talk to the humans behind the commits. I'm here today with Mike Hershel, who is a co-founder of something called Dripyard and a longtime member and uh developer in the Drupal community. Welcome to the show, Mike. >> Hey, thanks for having me. >> So, I think we'll we can start by uh asking uh what is a dripyard? >> That's a good question. Oh, there's a whole bunch of background. Uh so, like the TLDDR of dripyard is we sell premium Drupal themes that don't suck. Um like >> so so Drupal in the past like really never had a robust theme ecosystem like WordPress or Web Flow or any of the other competitors have. And and part of that reason is just because uh within within the within Drupal the theme is so separated from like the rest of the system it would never have any idea what the markup is. So like a Drupal developer would go in and create you know their views which are kind of like the smart list like the loop type stuff and but the theme could never predict what you know what the DOM structure was and what the CSS classes is. So so it could never you can never theme against that and that recently all changed. Drupal now sh has the a concept of components. We have like a a thing called single directory components where you have a a theme can ship a whole library of components as you know the markup the schema of what type of data it has and you know JavaScript and CSS. So our company uh is now shipping uh themes that uh you know have a whole library of components you can wire your data directly in there you know through the UI or through code. But yeah that's that's basically the gist of it. So, I'm a WordPress dude and I think a lot of a lot of this is going to be uh we do this in WordPress and and how does this work in Drupal? And I I it's funny because I was at uh I was at Bad Camp uh last month. >> It was my first Bad Camp, which is Bay Area Drupal Camp. >> Uh and I was doing that that thing. I was being that person, the the voice of why is WordPress do this uh for the for the Drupal folks there. Um so so I I I will definitely empathize uh putting [clears throat] you in this position having just been in that position from the other side. Um but so so talk a little bit more about like like you you mentioned some there's like specifically technical limitations of u the way that themes sort of existed in Drupal in the past that sort of prevented the existence or I guess feasibility of something like a marketplace. Uh >> yeah. >> Can I guess from from from a dev perspective, somebody like I have a history of like building WordPress themes and actually had a a site for a while where I was attempting to sell WordPress themes. Why what what is the sticking point? What are the sticking points that prevented that from being really uh doable in in Drupal from like like a in the weeds kind of uh direction? Yeah. Yeah. So, if you want to get down into the weeds, um, like Drupal, of course, has been around for a very long time. And like, so within Drupal, you go into your admin form or your admin side and you create what's called content types, which are the same thing as post types, you know, and and they're all fieldable. They're all kind of and and then we have another like uh module that's integrated in in into Drupal called views and you create like basic like like a listing of items and you can create filters and smarts. It's it's really powerful. You can do a heck of a lot of stuff with it. But as you do that uh as you create these content types as you create these fields within the content types as you create these views Drupal will add markup. you know, it'll add like a thing like it'll like with Drupal, a piece of content is called a node. And so it'll add like a c a default CSS class on there called like node- dash, you know, episode or something if you're doing a podcast website. But when you're trying to sell a theme, you know, you're trying to sell a theme that can work with a whole bunch of things and the theme doesn't have this functionality. Themes cannot cannot contain content types. They can't contain views. >> So you can ship a theme, but you don't know that that CSS class is going to be no d- episode. >> Sure. >> And you also don't know, you know, what the HTML structure is underneath, you know, and and and so that made things that made things pretty pretty, you know, almost impossible for a robust theme ecosystem. And and there's companies out there that do sell Drupal themes. you'll see them on >> theme forest and stuff like that. >> Um, these the themes that are sold like they kind of get around that by by shipping a a custom module with themes. And so the custom module might install some content types, >> you know, might have some views and stuff like that. >> But as soon as you go away from where that custom or where that custom module points you to, everything falls apart because theme can't handle that, >> right? And uh so so that's the difference, you know, and uh yeah. Yeah, that's basically >> Yeah. So like fundamentally I I guess sort of a quasi equivalent, although I think you could still probably build a theme that was open enough in WordPress to to support this too. But like the the idea of like I'm doing uh like I we were talking before we start we hit record is like this website has a uh a custom post type called episodes and if like WordPress didn't understand and didn't like already like have some like base classes and whatever that just the themes expect to use or you know that are general enough. Um then the idea is that because the theme doesn't necessarily know about the existence of the episode post type it would and because Drupal specifically is kind of architected from the perspective of like we're letting you tell us what types of content you're using on your site. Uh then it's like the theme is like well like I don't know what you're doing. Uh so it can't really fill in those gaps as as easily is what I'm hearing. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the and the theme can maybe do like some default styling, you know, you know, put some spacing around stuff, but you know, and and like me like like I the default theme in Drupal is called Olive Arrow. Like when you install when you install Drupal, that's what you get. And and I was the primary dev on that. And so we had to basically try to accommodate everything without the ability to accommodate everything. >> Sure. you know, but but with the introduction of components, you know, so so so now like as a as a theme developer, I can I can ship a library, you know, 50 60 components or more. And let's say I want to create an episode, you know, content type or post type or whatever. At that point, you know, I can I can kind of drag in, you know, the a title component, you know, map that to the, you know, my title field. I can drag in, you know, same thing with a body field or, you know, a video field and, you know, potentially, you know, MP3, like an audio player and stuff like that, >> right? >> And and so and so now it's it comes a lot more flexible, which is pretty neat. >> And uh I have been watching uh what's been going on in in Drupal land. Um this is sort of a uh one might suggest a fortuitous time for the existence or emergence of a theme development shop. Uh given that uh Dre Boyart the founder of Drupal has been talking a lot about uh marketplaces uh and selling Drupal stuff. Uh talk about that relationship and and what your thoughts are about sort of a commercial ecosystem for Drupal. >> Yeah. So like for the longest time, when I say for the longest time, maybe like for the past 10 years, Drupal really concentrated on like the enterprise. You know, we were like, "All right, let's just put all our time and effort into tracking down these Fortune 500 companies and try to get these million-dollar contracts." And, you know, that would work for the for for like the larger companies. But at the same time, the the unintended consequ consequence of that is that Drupal's market share started to decline. And when the market share declines that means that there are less Drupal developers. There are less people you know in that bid market kind of learning Drupal knowing what Drupal is. And that has hurt Drupal you know and so eventually the you know the [clears throat] powers that be the leadership within Drupal said like all right well we need to recapture this midm market and and and so the the put together this huge strategy and this is upre's uh uh he has a blog somewhere called starshot product strategy star was the code name for Drupal CMS before it was called Drupal CMS >> and so Basically, the goal is to for for Drupal to become feasible of like being being a CMS chosen for a website, you know, that has like maybe a budget of like 10 to $30,000 or something like that, which right now, unless you're a Drupal developer, you probably don't want to do that because, you know, Drupal Drupal can be a little expensive. So, uh, as part of that, they they decided, all right, well, we're going to create this, uh, kind of like I call it like an easy button for Drupal, you know, and, uh, called Drupal CMS, and it has like all the modules that you have to download preconfigured, you know, because there's like some modules that should totally be part of Drupal core, things like, you know, like the u friendly paths, you know, so if you create a piece of content, it's not node one, it's like, you know, whatever it automatically gets that node title in there and stuff for SEO. Um, so it has all this stuff preconfigured. It's pretty nice, but um there's still a couple missing pieces in there. Uh, one of missing pieces is like a decent page builder. Like Drupal has this whole ecosystem of page builders because no one has specifically like taken over. >> And honestly, this is something that's like kind of hurt Drupal. You know, you can kind of do anything in Drupal, but it shouldn't be this much effort. you know, WordPress has Gutenberg, Web Flow has whatever the hell Web Flow has, etc., you know, >> and so so there's a there Aquia, which is kind of like the largest Drupal company and the one that Drew founded, uh, is creating a next generation page builder called Drupal Canvas. And Drupal Canvas does everything that you pretty much, you know, you would assume it would do, you know, and and does a few extra things, too, which is pretty cool. So you can like copy and paste components, group components, create what's called like patterns, you know, edit them, you know, you can map your data to it. It's it's pretty cool. Um and then um so so at that point we have you know once Drupal Canvas comes out which will probably be next month and then you know we have then Drupal CMS 2.0 will be released. So at that point we have like a pretty good starting point but we still need to like kind of put everything together to compete with WordPress to compete with Web Flow, Wix, Squarespace, you know, and all Contentful and all those headless CMS's. So at that point um [clears throat] you know the Drupal Association of Powers that be said like like we need this ecosystem. We want to do something called site templates. And site templates are basically like it's a it's a theme. It's a Drupal theme, but also like preconfigured with those content types, you know, which are similar to post types. Uh, you know, has it can come preconfigured with modules and it can also come preconfigured with um default content, you know. So, an [clears throat] example of this is like let's say I'm a church and I want to, you know, I want a church churchy website, you know, and uh >> I built a couple of those. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, I I I I would hypothetically be able to browse this marketplace, look for a site template uh that like, you know, it would have maybe have a list of content types. You know, you may have like sermons, you know, events and blog, all that all that good stuff. And uh at that point uh pull it down, install it and at that point you would number one have all you would have content so you can just edit your content and then you would have a beautiful theme hopefully and everything preconfigured. So it's and but at but at that point like what's really cool is you have that flexibility of Drupal now like like Drupal is hyperflexible. Drupal could build like so many things if you have, you know, if you kind of know your way around it. Like like Drupal's freaking amazing. So So that's that's kind of where we're going with that. And and to get started, we're we're like the the marketplace is is set to kick off like right around Dripcon Chicago, which is going to be in March. And um it's going to be kind of like almost like a beta, you know, like we're going to be there. We're going to have a couple site templates. There's going to be 15 or 16 other companies that have some tight site templates. We don't know what we're going to build yet, or at least I don't know what we're going to build. >> Mhm. >> But, um, all our stuff is going to work. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be super successful. And And, uh, hopefully people will buy it, >> you know, and if they buy it, well, that's good. Like, like I I I can tell you like I've been to a number of word camps. I've been to like Word Camp Miami and Jacksonville, probably one or two others, and the amount of money in the WordPress ecosystem is like significantly more than in the Drupal ecosystem. >> And the reason is is because of the uh like the the robust commercial ecosystem around WordPress. you know, you have, you know, however many theme vendors, you got all these modu plug-in vendors, you know, and and and stuff like that, and they're all advertising. And and the thing about that is like that's why, you know, Word Camp US can cost thing like $50 or something like that because, you know, they get Is it $50 or is it just a couple hundred? Yeah, it's Yeah, it's I think I want to say this last year it was $50 a day. I have honestly paid less attention to word camp prices because my company pays for them. So like I never even look at like the ticket price, >> but uh but yeah, I think it was I think it was $50 a day. So if you're going to Word Camp US, it would be a hundred day $100 I think. [snorts] >> Yeah. So that's like ridiculous. >> But that's super that's super cheap. uh as compared to Drupalcon which is like a 1K basically. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and and Drupalcon is lowering their prices FYI like Drupalcon Chicago like the prices are going to start like at 500 just because we're kind of realizing we're pricing people out, you know, especially like a lot of the smaller companies like like Dripyard, you know, like to drop a couple grand going there, you know, that's that's a little more significant than if you're like Pantheon or Aqua or, you know, Automatic or something like that. You know, >> you're hitting on all of my all of my uh like key touch points about things in the WordPress ecosystem. [laughter] Like there's just so many crossovers. So, uh so one of the things, okay, so a foundational I'll start here. A foundational part of this podcast specifically came out of a sticker that I got from Drupal Con, which is right here, because I was at Drupalcon last year. Come for the code, stay for the community. And that that was I that resonated with me because that's the reason why I was in the WordPress community and ultimately that became one of the foundations for how I wanted to do this this show. Um, and one of the things that I learned when I was in Atlanta, uh, that is distinct about the Drupal community from the WordPress developer ecosystem is that in Drupal, more frequently, if we both have tools or modules or whatever that serve a similar purpose that we're probably more likely to be like, hey, let's join forces and make the best thing. So like if I have an SEO plugin and you have an SEO plugin, then we might work together and be like, well, let's make one of these things the de facto SEO plugin and make it the best plugin or module. Um, whereas in the WordPress ecosystem, >> uh, if I have an SEO plugin and you have an SEO plugin, I'm probably not going to talk to you because that's my IP and I might turn around and sell it. So, I heard I had a lot of conversations at uh Drupal Con about this, but also uh about the idea of a marketplace because that was sort of when Dre started uh floating the idea. Um >> and uh and my reaction as someone in the WordPress ecosystem is I really like that model of of being collaborative and sharing and and like you know joining these two uh things instead of like really going headto-head and competing. Um, what do you what is your take on sort of like because I because in WordPress we're more likely to be competitors and not sharing those ideas and being sort of siloing yourselves off. So what is your take on that sort of uh dynamic in terms of like do you do you see that as uh something that could be a risk to like the Drupal like developer ecosystem as things get a little [clears throat] bit more competitive? >> Yeah, things are always a risk, right? like as soon as you make big changes like this and these are the these are some of the biggest changes in the Drupal ecosystem uh ever you know uh there's always a risk. Um, so like to to expand on your point, like I I saw a blog post at one point that like WordPress had like I don't knowund and something form builders, you know, that that that you can buy and and and and they won't play nice with each other. >> And and and then like furthermore, like if you have WordPress and you install like, you know, 14 15 plugins, you're kind of >> your site's like a little funky. You're probably fighting Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you can be fighting some bugs and stuff like that. Like one of the cool things is with Drupal is like all the modules play well together. Like Drupal has a very robust set of API APIs, you know, and and that's something that that we do better than WordPress. WordPress does a lot of better a lot a lot of things better than Drupal, but one thing we have is like a robust APIs that allow things to work together. So, if you have like 60 70 modules installed on a uh on a Drupal site, it it like that's normal. You know, if you have a couple hundred, that's fine, too. >> Um, and so like going into like Drupal has probably like three or four page builders, but there's one like big one. It's called Web Form. You know, it's easy >> and built around Webform. There's ecosystems that build on top of that. So like you you know you'll have web form commerce, web form this, web form that that that allow you to do like you know little things and it's just really nice. You don't have to evaluate you don't know. You don't got to pay you know $20, $40 or whatever for something like that. You just try it. You get it to work and and everything goes. So like that's that's one of the advantages that that Drupal has and that's something that I think you know the leadership recognizes. Um, you know, Dre had stated modules will always be GPL forever free, >> you know, and it's it's the themes that, you know, that that that could be commercial code. So, back when I was you like back when I was like researching like like doing a little bit of due diligence like can I do driftyard, you know? So started looking into GPL and like everything because GPL for those who don't know has a very sticky license you know where like if if you write PHP that builds on top of Drupal or WordPress and then distribute it it's technically GPL which means it's free >> and [clears throat] um >> but that doesn't necessarily apply to things that it's it's a little bit of legal but like things that are not directly interfacing with that. So things that can run in the browser, >> things like CSS and JavaScript will not necessarily be GPL and and I did a little bit of digging and and there's a Drupal licensing working group, you know, and there was some talk about that and and the conclusion that that I saw within this issue is yeah, yeah, like CSS and G and JavaScript is not necessarily GPL. [snorts] So at that point, I was like, all right, well, we can do this. We can just kind of, you know, have our CSS and everything closed source. So, the TLDDR of all the all of this is that like it's it's kind of like a fine line, you know, like you can't like like it's not necessarily a good idea for everything to cost money and and then people don't collaborate, you know. Um, but at the same time, you need money because people need to get paid, >> right? Like I am doing this because to tell you the truth like I wanna I want to be able to make six figures and work 20 hours a week. That is my dream, >> you know. And uh and >> yeah, so it's it's going to be a fine line. I have a feeling that like as we as as as Drupal continues to like continue down this path, there are going to be, you know, changes and people are going to figure things out. people like like Drupal's going to make mistakes and they're going to say like, "All right, well, let's back this up a little bit or maybe we should go forward a little bit more, you know, maybe we're not doing this enough." >> Yeah. >> So, I I think it's going to be trial and error. >> Yeah. Yeah. that's interesting about the about modules being different and and and like the marketplace not being handled uh or not covering modules necessarily versus themes and themes being the thing that we're that we're talking about first. I think it makes a lot of sense uh both from sort of Drupal's history but also like creating [snorts] like not shutting off that sort of collaborations which I do recognize I think happens a lot more in modules because like you said like you can have dependency modules and whatever like this module calls these other three modules and whatever and you do need to sort of like keep that ecosystem. Um, in WordPress there is kind of sort of an equivalent. Um, there are like plugins that are like add-ons or additional functionality to an existing plugin and maybe that existing plugin is a premium plugin. Um, or maybe it's like a free plugin and the extension is uh is a premium thing or whatever. Like there's all sorts of like weird things like that. Um, but um but yeah, I think that that's interesting. Do you see uh a future where there might be also a module marketplace both like you know besides drupal.org and getting your stuff like normally that way but like having like a like the equivalent of like an invado sort of thing where you could like purchase and and integrate like premium uh modules for Drupal. >> I would be really really surprised. There are like some modules that like kind of do the whole GPL loophole and put some processing processing on the server, you know, that's kind of how they how they do it. So there's there's things like that. I I can't see any any invado type marketplace for for for modules. I I think if that happened, people would kind of get pissed and then just like download it and throw it up on drupal.org or GitHub or something like that, which has happened in the past, you know, >> happens in too. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. And and it's interesting like it's an interesting topic, right? So, if I sell a site template, let's say I sell this for like $1,000 and I have my theme and also like has, you know, a composer file that references a bunch of modules. These modules are key key components to this site template. Well, I'm making all the profit of that. These module these module maintainers aren't making you know? Don't know if I can say that word, but I just did. [laughter] But, uh, >> I'll flag the explicit tag. It's not a problem. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, and that go but that also goes all the way down, you know, like, well, at that point, the core maintainers and the core developers are not getting paid, you know, the Apache developers or EngineX. Um and and and also like the argument would be that well these module maintainers and developers have been doing kind of unpaid unpaid labor for years and years while other people are making money. You have agencies, you know, like agencies. I used to work for a company called Labot >> and and and they would put together these great websites for these large companies for multi-million dollar contracts and and you know, does that money go toward those module developers? No. I I mean, to be fair, there are some that there's a there's a number that would work at that company, but still, you know, so it it's a really interesting ecosystem. like open source is really interesting and and h like how how that works and how that can work. So >> yeah, >> I'm interested. So, so one of the things that happens a lot in uh the WordPress commercial ecosystem is that even even though technically because because Matt Melan has explicitly stated a number of times that he believes that all code uh in plugins and themes should be uh GPL licensed or GPL compatible uh even even when it doesn't have to be because that's the spirit of the GPL, not necessarily the letter, you Um, so he's like he doesn't like things like Invato or they have mixed licenses or whatever. He's uh he's much more like everything should be GPL. And if everything is GPL, then that means anybody can take your code and then republish it and put it somewhere else and now it's their code because that's what the GPL allows you to do is basically redistribute it uh as is. Um, so the the the thing that most uh premium WordPress plugins and themes sort of do is okay, what you're paying for is access to uh updates. Uh, so they have a different update mechanism that so it's not going to be on like WordPress.org and get automatic updates that way. Uh, it's going to be through their own sort of homebrewed update mechanism. And two, they're also selling support for a contracted period of time. Um, is that sort of the model that you are thinking of uh for dripyard as well? Are you thinking that uh primarily you are selling the proprietary like JavaScript and CSS? I mean, you know, like that is that is the thing that is that is being sold even if it's like you're selling it with a bunch of other stuff that is technically GPL compatible. So, like we're definitely like selling support add-ons, you know, reoccurring, and that's like $100 a year. So, that's not a heck of a lot of money. >> Um, [clears throat] updates, you know, will people just will download the zip file from our, you know, when they log in, get, you know, get their theme and stuff like that and then they can, you know, download their updates that way and, you know, hopefully their changes will be in a sub theme so they don't get clobbered. >> Mhm. But um like it's like I can't really I it's going to be interesting to see how things go. I I I can't really tell you I I can tell you what we're doing, >> but I can't tell you what everything everyone else is doing like. And >> yeah, I I don't know if that really answers your question or not, but >> I was I mean I was wondering from from the perspective of of Dripyard specifically. Yeah. So it sounds like that you would like kind of and that's one of the things too like if you're gating access to the files uh because you have to be a logged user and you have to pay to get the login in the first place, then then that's that's an easy way of of making sure that people are are paying for your stuff. >> Yeah. Yeah, we're doing that. And and there's there's like to tell you the truth, there's like nothing stopping people, you know, from dist redistributing our stuff after after they purchase it. You know, like we could sue them, but you know, we themes for $500, you know, >> you know, more than likely what we'll end up I'll I'll end up like spilling something on my Drupal account or something. But like, you know, Yeah. Uh but but at the same time, you know, like like our thought process is, well, if you're if you're starting a uh a project with Drupal, you're probably spending significantly more than $10,000. Just spend like $500 on a theme, you know, you know, add in some support seems pretty reasonable. And and honestly like these themes that we developed um over 10 months and I'm like probably thousands of hours you know and uh they're really good you know they're they're they're awesome and it's going to save people >> tens of thousands of dollars you know by by using these. So >> so what I we've talked a lot about Drupal and we've talked a lot about WordPress. What I often like to do uh is to really talk about um sort of what your journey to tech or web development was sort of like in the first place. Like how did you get to be uh how did you get to be my cersal co-founder of Dripyard? Like what what led to uh to you just getting involved in the stuff in the first place? >> So I was born at a very young age. [laughter] I got I got into uh computers back in like 1999. I used to do technical support for Dylan Gateway Computers before they like shipped off all that stuff over to India, you know. So I would talk to your grandmother trying to troubleshoot Windows 98. Mhm. >> I moved up to up to Gainesville and I got this job doing technical support over the phone technical support uh just because like I had done that before and we it was this enterprise software company called Bar Systems that like would interface between like mainframes and like regular networks and stuff and it was so slow that we we would just sit there and twiddle our thumbs and the guy in the office next to me he was doing these websites and he was using Macromedia fireworks and uh showed me how to do that and I had to use Photoshop This would have been like 2001, 2002. And I would literally like do all my designs and fireworks. We both would. And then we would slice it up and we would just export it. And it was it was literally like a table full of images that would be >> I remember those. Yep. That was awful. I hate those. >> Yeah, I found I found some of those on my old hard drive and I have some of those up in my on my GitHub. Like if you have some links or something like like show notes or something, I'll I'll I'll shoot you some links. You can see sp spaceer gifs and stuff in there. >> Yeah. So, I got into websites and I started doing like my brother's band's website. I did my brother's friends man's websites and I started like, you know, doing websites as a side hustle and stuff like that. I remember I would I would put these ads on Craigslist for barter to do websites for like to have people do stuff for our house. And I ended up getting this guy. He was a starting a lawn care company. and uh we became friends, you know, he put in a sprinkler system and and he he said he had this website called uh or he had a domain name called gatortailgating.com, you know, and I'm a big flirty gator football fan, >> you know, and I was like, I like tailgating. I'm like, let's do this, you know. >> So, I uh I [clears throat] started looking for CMSs. This would have been 2007. And I don't know why I didn't look at WordPress, but I I looked at Jumla and I looked at Drupal. And I chose Drupal to be honest because it had an integrated forum which is like such a funny thing to select. But then I kind of got into it and around and I I started doing like a little bit of freelance in Drupal, you know, I would just literally like do everything the wrong way, you know, like edit the files and core, which you're not supposed to do, etc., etc. And um I eventually uh made my way like I remember I Googled you know Gainesville Drupal just to see if there's what would h happen you know and I found I found this thing on groups. Drupal.org that led me to Florida Drupal camp and I went down there in early 2010 and I was kind of hooked on I was like holy I didn't know that there was actual community. I thought it was just like a bunch of nerds developing this you know and they taught me how to do stuff that I didn't know how to do. I went home and I was like so enthusiastic, you know, ended up going the next few years and started volunteering and stuff and um I started looking for Drupal jobs at that point. I was working for the Florida High School Athletic Association at the time just doing like all their computer stuff and I migrated their like fairly large website to Drupal 6 at the time and uh then I uh I ended up uh you know kind of getting more involved with Florida Drupal Camp. I ended up uh you know getting a my job at Labot back in uh 2014 and uh kind of just kind of just went head on into Drupal at that point you know if I wasn't already there and I ended up uh getting involved in Drupal core development at Labot where you know uh I uh [clears throat] I I got kind of got roped into uh leading a team to do a new theme for Drupal where the previous theme for Drupal just had been around for so long, you know, at the time I was probably like 10 years old, which is like a million in internet years, you know, >> and and and so went through that and everybody was really happy and, you know, ended up doing a bunch of other cool stuff, you know, and then uh ended up quitting Lilot for more money, you know, and then quitting that job for more money, >> end up getting laid off and that, you know, and then I was like, you know, that led me to here and I was like, because I had been mulling this company for a while and I was even talking to other developers while I was still like, >> you know, in various different jobs about potentially starting this with them. And then I was like, this is going to be it. I'm going to I'm I just got laid off. This is going to be my kick in the ass. I'm going to I'm going to start this up. And you know, so I I uh I reached out to my current business partner, this guy named Andy Giles, who lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and he's a amazing backend deb. He's he's he's a horrible front end dev >> and but he's also like really good at things like DevOps and uh e-commerce and he's a nice guy, you know, and uh we ended up um ended up talking him talking him into I said we're going to get rich. we're gonna have, you [laughter] know, all this type of stuff. And uh, you know, I I, you know, we like moneywise, we had to invest in some designers, you know, so we ended up we at at this point, we both probably threw in about like five grand into the business to pay for some designs, you know, and uh just a heck of a lot of work. Ended up taking an equity line of credit against my house so I had something to live off of. um and ended up uh just like spending I I I thought we were going to have this first first theme out in like 3 months. It took took like 10 months >> because there like it's funny how much work goes into making sure your themes can support like almost anything that the kitchen sink, you know, right? >> And and um >> but now we have this whole design system. We have a we have a system behind everything. So, it's it's really easy to kind of turn around new themes at at this point. But what we're uh I guess the answers your question, but I guess where I'm going with this is like currently we're kind of working on uh making sure we have full support for Drupal Canvas, which is that nextgen page builder that's going to come out in about a month. >> Yeah. Tell me about uh so I've I've been sort of watching the evolution of uh Drupal CMS uh since uh well I guess since January this year pretty much. >> Um and and like I went back before before I went to Drupal Con uh in in Atlanta. Um I went back and I watched Dre's like last two keynotes before that. Um, and I watched the one from Vienna this last uh couple weeks. Um, and I remember when I was in Atlanta and he was showing what was then referred to as experience builder, which is now Drupal canvas. Uh, I was like I I I tweeted actually I guess it's not tweeting if you do it on blue sky. Uh, it's like blute. I don't know. Um, I I posted on Blue Sky that this looks like the thing that Gutenberg should have been all along. >> Yeah. >> Um, I was like so incredibly impressed by uh [snorts] what looked to be like way more intuitive, way easier uh to use. And I've I've played with and installed uh Drupal CMS. And I I [clears throat] fully believe, in fact, I wrote a blog post on the Pantheon blog about this. I fully believe that that is like a thousand times better experience uh first-time user experience for installing uh a CMS than than WordPress. And part of that has to do with like it's more of like a guided install. It's asking you questions, but also it's it's asking you like what type of site you want to you want to create. And most like every other CMS I've ever installed just gives you a bunch of form fields >> and it doesn't ask you the question, what are you trying to build? >> And so because of that, [clears throat] >> uh, you never ask the question of yourself, what type of website are you trying to build? You just kind of like, oh well, I'm just going to click a couple buttons and then I have a website and then I'm just going to do stuff, right? Like, but you never actually have to intentionally like come up with like, no, what am I actually trying to create? And I thought that that was a really uh a really good like just like just slow down and like make this the process a little bit more more user friendly. And then also when it when it installs like I feel like like the user interface which in the past uh for me as somebody who is more familiar with WordPress the user interface and the Drupal admin is very complex and hard for me to navigate and know where all the stuff is and it feels better. And maybe it's just because it looks more like the WordPress admin. I don't know. Uh, but it feels better for me to like in in the Drupal CMS admin. Um, I don't know, maybe just because stuff is on the left, I guess. Uh, but like it feels like it's easier for me to to navigate. So, I guess I guess my question is like, uh, somewhere in here is a question, I think. uh which is um like where do you see like do you do you believe that that capturing the sort of mid-market or that first-time user experience uh will be like the changing point for driving more Drupal adoption? I mean, I I I would say definitely, you know, like there's a lot more mid-market than uh enterprise market, you know, and and and honestly, to tell you the truth, like the enterprise people want the same crap as the mid-market people for for the most part, you know, they want to be able to assemble >> pages without having to like, you know, have a post doctorate or something like that, you know. Um like you know like I don't know if you're familiar with like um Adobe Enterprise Manage Builder. Yeah. Manager. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like they have like nice drag and drop stuff, but they don't do what Drupal does, you know, >> and but but they ended up they end up selling selling their product based on like showing that drag and drop stuff to the marketers and the marketers, you know, get super excited about that because it's pretty sexy, >> you know, and and and if we if if we can match that and surpass it, which I believe we will, like that's going to be a big deal, you know, and and the same thing with like Gutenberg, like like Like canvas is built by by looking at the lessons from everything, you know, from things like Gutenberg and AM and and almost every other page builder out there. They were all evaluated as as these technical requirements started coming in for Drupal Canvas. >> Yeah. >> You know, and um like one thing that I really like I I I've done like a little bit of Gutenberg development under Drupal because there is a Gutenberg module for Drupal. >> Yep. But but like one thing that I really disliked about Gutenberg is you have to have like almost two versions of your markup. you know, you have to have the one that appears in the editor and the one that appears, you know, on the homepage and stuff >> and and and like that's something that, you know, like with Drupal Canvas, like like right now I'm in the process of uh you know, making sure all of our components work well and and and there's some funky things I'm having to kind of work through, but you know, it it's all this is kind of normal. But like I I add like an additional setting like a prop or you know a slot and it just shows it just it's just like nice. >> Mhm. >> And and it like to developer experiences getting right up there. And then like coming from previous Drupal page builders which which honestly a lot of them are like really kind of rough unless you did a lot of manual work. like you can make these page builders awesome, but that requires, you know, a person who knows what they're doing to install a bunch of modules and configure them just so, you know, um, but just like right out of the box, it's just like nice. You start dragging stuff, you start copying and pasting stuff, everything it updates on the fly. Uh, there's a nice preview button. The there's there's all the things that just like feel like very intuitive. Um, so it's nice and and and there's still like a kill a little rough edges like like I go in there and I I am filing bugs, you know, like I find stuff and I'm filing bugs because it's not stable yet. >> But it's it's it's like head and shoulders above, you know, anything else that Drupal's uh done before. And like as far like I I I like it better than Gutenberg, too. though Gutenberg I tell you the truth like it's going to be interesting to see how that works out you know >> yeah I I so I've been in the last year or so been playing a lot more so as as Gutenberg has has developed in the WordPress ecosystem it's extended to be more than just like the block editor in uh content stuff it's been expanded to do more site editing things. Um, the site that that this podcast is uh is the website, the community code website uh is just uh a 2025 like default theme and a bunch of customizations in the full site editor to change the different layouts for the different pages and and uh the episodes and and whatever. Like so like I can do a lot of stuff just using the tools that are that are core without having to build like a theme at all or think about that anymore which is pretty impressive. Like it didn't used to be like that. Um, but it took a long time to get to that point and and for a long time it was like there's a lot of things that you're like a lot of limitations that you uh that I was like running up against uh and like oh I don't know how to do this thing or how do you like I just I just need to change a line of CSS to fix this other problem whatever. Um and it took a lot to to get to the point where where it is now. Um but it does seem like I mean demos aren't aren't live a And so like it the proof is in the pudding when you actually start to use it. But it what I've seen of uh Drupal Canvas uh it feels like it's a better like it's it's further along that that timeline to [clears throat] a usable thing than a lot of the stuff that has been in WordPress core for you know the last couple years and then iterated on to get to get to the point where it is now. [snorts] >> Yeah. I can't really speak to like, you know, like when I don't know WordPress nearly as well as you and and I haven't used it recently, so I can't like really speak to how it feels compared to, you know, mo modern Gutenberg. My most of my Gutenberg experience comes within the context of Drupal, which is not not the correct experience, >> specific flavor. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I I can tell you that like there are some some things in Drupal Canvas that like, you know, need to be worked on and and I've been filing bugs and pinging the appropriate people in Slack, which I'm I'm pretty sure they're probably, >> you know, oh crap, here's Hersel again, you know, [laughter] >> but um [clears throat] but but at the same time, like a number of the bugs I found have become release blockers. >> Yeah. >> You know, and and and things like that, and that helps. So, um, it's gonna take iteration. I I think like the the success or failure on on canvas is going to be like how it feels, you know, how intuitive is it, how it feels, how many paper cuts are there. >> Yeah. you know, we can deal with a couple couple paper cuts, but if there's too many paper cuts, it starts to get like really really annoying, you know, and and and on top of that, like how well how well developers can extend it, you know? You know, if I want to inject XYZ or something in there in into the edit edit editorial interface, how easy can I do that, you know? Yeah, that's that's actually a really good point and something that I wanted to talk about too. And I know we're getting close to time, but I want to still throw this in because um one of the things about uh that when Gutenberg development started forced uh WordPress developers to learn was the the fact that Gutenberg the decision was made very early on to to make it a React interface. And so that meant that not only did uh WordPress developers need to learn JavaScript, but they also needed to specifically learn React. Um, and the learning curve like you know having having played with React uh a little bit I didn't I mean not before Gutenberg obviously why would I uh but having played with it since like I do like using uh React coming from like a PHP background because it makes a little bit more sense uh to my brain but like [clears throat] there's definitely a learning curve there. um talk about like the developer experience for building things for canvas because as I understand it, it's not that same sort of like you need to learn a fundamentally different language anymore. >> Yeah. Yeah. So like if I want to create a component that works in and outside of canvas, it's it's the same as creating a component like outside of canvas, you know. So I I mentioned that that Drupal has this concept of uh direct uh components which are called single directory components and basically like within your theme you have a component directory and within within that component directory you have you know a directory for every single component uh and there's two mandatory files for your component. There's a twig file which is [snorts] which is like the markup language that Drupal uses. It's it's it's like standard HTML and then some curly brackets. You can put for loops and all that type of stuff in there. And uh then there's a the component.yaml file. The component.yaml file will say, hey, this is a component. And then it'll also list the um type of data that that twig file is expecting, you know. So you say like I'm going to have a title. It's going to be a string and you know you can call it you know title or something you know or you know I'm gonna have this you know portrait landscape checkbox and it's a boolean you know I have an array all this type stuff right and so [clears throat] so it it describes what the twig file is expecting and then you have a couple optional files you can have a CSS file in there you you can have a JavaScript file in there if if if it sees those it'll automatically be loaded whenever the whenever the component is loaded and you can also like put into the YAML file you know stuff for additional CSS files or you know dependencies on other type of you know stuff too if you want. Um so so at that point you have you have a directory I mean a single directory component and as soon as uh canvas sees that single directory component it'll be available. Now, if something is screwed up in that YAML file, like let's say like you got your YAML indentation incorrect or something like that, what's kind of cool is you can go to like a little reports page, find your component in there, and it'll tell you exactly what's wrong with it, which is super nice from a development experience. >> Um, but once that component is is there and it's working, uh, like Drupal will know, hey, this is a string. Uh, so I'm going to put a, you know, a little text field in there, you know, and you and there's some other, uh, like stuff in your YAML you can add to say like I want to load a rich text editor, you know, >> and there's there's some stuff in there says this, you know, you can say this is an object and it's going to accept, you know, this is going to be an image. So that'll give you like a little widget to browse to to an image, load into your meter library and stuff like that, [snorts] you know, and at that point it kind of it's this kind of works. So, the development experience for creating components is pretty pretty good. There's a couple rough edges, like a couple, and these are being worked on, you know, and I'm like I'm [clears throat] totally on top of that. Um, but even the rough edges have workarounds, you know, and and like if if you go to the dripard blog and stuff, I actually blog about this stuff because it's kind of it's kind of fun, you know? It's fun to >> to like solve these problems as I'm doing this. you know >> [gasps] >> um as far as the development experience of extending the actual editorial interface that's a good question like I haven't done that you know >> um like uh dripyard's editorial interface is built within React but that being said like like when Gutenberg was you know started what was this like probably like five six seven years ago or something like that >> react it a lot more people know React than they did back you know, like like React is is is React was common back then, but it's much more common right now, >> right? >> So, like I feel that people will be able to kind of jump in there and get in into it. But that being said, like you know, people have not yet because it's not technically stable right now. Like as of time of this recording, it's a release camp like RC1 or RC2 or something like that, >> right? >> Yeah. Yeah. But I mean that's interesting though because like fundamentally what I'm hearing is like if you want to build something that can be used by canvas, you don't [clears throat] have to learn a completely different language. And I think that that's huge. Uh I think that that's a really big thing that that uh >> uh Canvas has going for it. And like you said, like even even beyond that, the the developer ecosystem today for people who know React or people who have encountered React is probably a lot broader and bigger than it was five or six years ago when we were talking about uh whether we were going to use React or Vue to put into to build Gutenberg on top of. So >> yeah, absolutely. >> So like just the ecosystem is different. >> Um yeah, well thank you so much uh for coming on Mike. Uh, I appreciate, uh, learning about Drupal and and having an extremely nerdy [clears throat] conversation comparing, uh, CMS's. Um, where can, uh, people find you if they're looking for you online? >> Uh, that's a good question. So, uh, my website is hersel.com and that's spelled with a C, like there's no S's in there. So, hl.com. Uh, dripyard.com is my company. If you're into Drupal, check out our blog and, you know, buy our stuff. I'm on like blue sky atmike.hershel.com and I'm on mastadon. You can I'm on like most of the things. Oh, on LinkedIn I am Mike Herschel's disembodied head and it has like my head floating right there and uh people have like come up to me at conferences like you're a disembodied head. Yeah. [laughter] >> Hello Mr. Disembodied head. >> Yep. >> Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mike, again, again, for coming on and for everyone else uh for listening uh either now or in the future if you're coming upon across this episode at some distant point in the future. Uh and uh until next time, uh we'll see you on the internet. All right, bye everybody. [music] [music], Episode 14: Mike Herchel, YouTube, 01kbmqvgecysy0wsqw9mcsmx7j.